A View from the Backseat
by LotrNaustenfan
Summary: Times are changing and the people too. The relationship of Sybil and Branson as it develops beginning after the Garden Party and peaking in at different increments of time over 7ish years. Lots of mushiness.


**Just recently got obsessed with this show. Go PBS for getting it brought over to us lowly Americans! lol. Can't wait till January.**

**Obviously, at least I would hope it's obvious, I do not own this program or PBS (wouldn't that be fun?)**

A View from the Backseat

It had been two weeks since she saw him last. Since he took her hand boldly before Mrs. Hughes and Gwen and anyone else who cared to look their way. Two days since he leaned in, with blue eyes shining prettily and smile plastered to his handsome face, and said the words, "I don't suppose…" It was two days since Mrs. Hughes interrupted his speech, and her father's voice rang out announcing England was at war.

Everything had changed so quickly and she was left behind watching as her father suited up for the war effort and Mathew declared he was leaving the estate and enlisting all in the same breath. The estate was once again in danger, and the staff below were dwindling as footmen were hard to come by with the military in far more need of fit young men.

The world was changing and quickly, but Sybil was left behind with ambitions and dreams of a different world playing in her head. She wanted more, but she couldn't swallow back the thoughts of blue eyes and the possibility of a certain young man leaving them next.

It was two months since she stopped wondering what he might have said if Mrs. Hughes might have let him. At least, she told herself that. Two months since she got her act together and started volunteering at the hospital. She saw him often now, as he drove her to Ripon each day for her sit ins with Mrs. Crawley, but he rarely said a word and she dare not speak. He was silent; she was silent, but that didn't stop the glances in the mirror when one thought the other wasn't looking. Two months and still the same fears haunted her: the leave taking, the family members coming back in body bags, rather than prancing into the dining room in their evening's best.

"Branson," she said suddenly, with thoughts of white faces lying in a sea of bodies plaguing her mind.

"Yes, m'Lady?" he responded as he sat up straighter at the sound of her voice. He had been thinking of much pleasanter things since beginning the trip to Ripon, like the way that stray hair that had escaped her well kempt hairdo was currently stuck to her beautiful lush lips.

"What will you do, if there is a call for soldiers?"

She looked concerned and he didn't want to distress her. "Like a conscription, m'Lady?" he gulped back his nervousness.

"Yes, Branson, what would you do?"

Seeking not to alarm her, he said, "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

She would have pressed him further, but just then he pulled up to the hospital as Mrs. Crawley was just then approaching the building. Branson rushed out of the car, to get the door for Sybil, but she was already out of the back seat and heading toward the door to the hospital arm in arm with Mrs. Crawley.

It was two years since that fateful Garden Party, when he had taken her hand.

Now, time was rushing by. Her opportunities to converse with her friend, the Irish Radical Chauffer, were in short supply as her preparations began to travel to London. Sybil was going to assist in one of the large hospitals in London that was looking for compotent hard working women to assist in their soldier care units. Mrs. Crawley, being very connected with the medical community had put forth Sybil's name, and to spite Lord Grantham's misgivings, he had eventually relented.

Surprise struck everyone when Lord Grantham demanded that Sybil have an escort to London, and considering they already had someone in their employ who fit that description, he called Branson into his library.

"Branson, you will accompany Lady Sybil to London. Make sure she is safe."

So he followed her, first in the car, with her in her customary seat, and then in the train that would take them the rest of the way. He would make a round trip after depositing Sybil at her Aunt's house. While on the train, he stood across from her, staring out the window, while she sat facing him, eyes glued to his expression.

"I have been thinking," she said snapping him out of his reverie, "about what you said at the Garden Party all that time ago." His face lightened at her words. Previously his expression had concealed a cloud, from what she didn't know. He listened intently to her words, and then smiled at the memory.

"It feels like only yesterday to me, m'Lady," he whispered out.

"You had been trying to tell me something. At first, I had been merely curious, but then you never brought it up again in all those times we were alone together."

He gulped at the words 'alone together' thinking now how intimate the idea was, and how alone they were now. He couldn't help his pulse racing.

"I just wanted to know and I couldn't leave now, possibly never to see you again, without knowing."

She looked desperate and he couldn't help but stare into those lovely eyes, as she begged him to finish his sentence from so long ago.

He cast it off with a silly grin, "It was nothing, m'Lady."

She, however, was not the kind of girl to give in so easily. She pressed him for his answer, and three years later when he came back from the war, looking much more rugged and battle worn, he would repeat his words before her father.

The world was changing, faster with every passing day, and so now it didn't seem so unlikely – a soldier and a nurse (much more plausible than their previous roles of Lady and Chauffer) falling in love. While, perhaps, Lord Grantham was unhappy at the prospect, his estate and holding were hardly of consequence now and his title was meaning less and less in this now progressive England. His final breaking point was seeing the happiness on his daughter's face as the young man spoke. She was in love and more equipped to live in less than ideal situations than either of his other daughters. The war had changed him too and he now saw the great error in his longheld beliefs about class systems as men of all walks of life died and survived beside him, and many more came through his makeshift hospital house. And most importantly, he knew what a treasure love was, especially after the disasters that so many had faced in the recent years. Love was too valuable to waste. That, at least, he knew.

Two years later, the bride and groom would walk down the aisle uncertain of what lay before them, but knowing they would face it together.

"Tell me again, Tom," she would say that night, after their loving consummation.

He, having heard this same sentiment many times, responded with a smile, "That day, the day the of the Garden Party, the day that everyone's lives changed in an instant as your father announced the war, I was too busy thinking of your bright eyes to let anything dampen my spirits. I had wanted to ask you to take a walk with me, so that I could tell you that you were the most amazing girl I had ever met – intelligent, strong willed, determined with a mind of your own, beautiful and so good natured and agreeable in manners and in pure humanity and compassion. I wanted to tell you that I had fallen for you, completely, and I had wanted to ask you if a Chauffer, a 'radical' Socialist with big dreams, could ever dare to hope that such an angel would look his way."

He continued in the same manner, brushing her hair out of her face in the process and laying light kisses on her cheeks. She would smile, and sigh, like those in love do, and she would fall asleep to the memory of a young man in a Chauffer's uniform taking her hand and smiling with so much hope in his eyes.

And, as they say in fairy tales, they lived happily ever after…

Even with the many road bumps that marriage is keen to, and the many many happy children.

**A/N: Historical inaccuracies are probably abound. I am not a historian or I wouldn't be writing fanfiction, so please cut me some slack on that one. Also, I know it is unlikely that Lord Grantham would have Sybil accompanied to London by Branson, but I couldn't see him allowing Sybil to go alone, and I certainly didn't want someone else present for that conversation. So, basically, I'm just hoping you will overlook that. Furthermore, this is a sketch of what probably could have been a whole chaptered story, but I have neither the time nor patience for my insufficient talent for such things, so this is what you get. I hope you enjoy it all the same, I think it is pretty decent for someone who hasn't written anything in years, literally years. Let me know what you think.**


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